Raman Spectral Library for Thermally Aged Microplastics from Waste Incineration

A spectral library of eight representative plastics aged under high-temperature conditions to improve identification of microplastics from waste-to-energy incineration. The dataset includes an open-access identification framework and was applied to flue gas samples from an industrial grate furnace incinerator. It was created by Ting Su and last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Training spectral matching algorithms based on the provided library of thermally transformed polymer signatures.
• Estimating environmental emissions of microplastics based on the reported particle count and size data from an industrial incinerator.
• Refining polymer classification schemes using the novel 'MP derivative' concept introduced in the study.
• Benchmarking identification confidence for aged microplastics against the reported improvement in spectral matching degree.

Strengths

• Includes spectral data for eight representative plastic polymers subjected to thermal aging.
• The identification framework reportedly elevated the median spectral matching degree from 47% to 91%.
• Applied to real-world samples, identifying over 89% of emitted microplastics as thermally transformed derivatives.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset is relatively small at 7.3 MB, which may constrain the scope of analysis.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Data was gathered using in situ Raman spectroscopy to capture real-time spectral evolution of plastics during thermal transformation.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-30 18:05:03; freshness should be verified.